Studies on olefin-coordinating transition metal carbene complexes: VI. Synthesis and crystal structure of two novel inner salt complexes of iron

Reaction of N-cinnamylidenyl-m-4-xylidine (tricarbonyl) iron (1) with phenyllithium and p-chlorophenyllithium at low temperature, and subsequent alkylation of the resulting adducts with Et3OBF4 in CH2Cl2 at −60°C gave two novel zwitter-ion iron complexes with the compositions of C19H22 N(CO)3 FeC6H5(2) and C19H22N(CO)FeC6H4Cl (3), respectively. The complex 2 crystallizes in the monoclinic system, space group P21/n with a = 10.624(3), b = 25.155(6), c = 19.375(9)A, β = 101.1 (3)°, V= 5042.2A3, Z=8, Dc = 1.27g/cm3. The structure of 2 has been solved by direct method and refined by block-matrix least-squares method to give the final R of 0.071.